Hello Reader,

It has been an exciting couple weeks. The Sinews of Scripture is officially available and I am eager to hear how God is using the book to build up churches and Christian believers. As you will see, I also surpassed 100,000 words for the year this month. In this issue, I have an adapted section from our new book that continues the conversation last month about the shape of blessing in our lives. Sometimes God's blessing is better and more difficult than we would expect.

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What is blessing?

Every Christian wants to be blessed. At the end of every worship service, I speak a blessing over the congregation from Numbers 6: "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his face toward you and give you his peace." Our congregation wants to receive this blessing - to know that God's face shines upon us and he is gracious to us. I doubt we are an outlier in wanting blessing.

But what exactly does blessing look like? In the West, we often have a very narrow and specific understanding of what being blessed looks and feels like. Being blessed feels good. Being blessed looks like being successful and healthy. Being blessed means increase and growth for your family or business. Being blessed means bigger and better.

Yet, the picture of blessing in the Bible is more complicated than that.

Genesis 48 and 49 is full of blessings. Jacob tells of God’s blessing at Luz. Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh, then his twelve sons. Blessing after blessing. Yet, if we are honest, a lot of this doesn’t look much like blessing to us. Instead of a warm and fuzzy feeling — something that seems and feels obviously good — we have harsh words of judgment. Instead of being told to “be true to yourself,” the sons are given painfully honest words about their character. Instead of miracle cures and overflowing prosperity, we have strength in the midst of trials. It doesn’t quite look like blessing to us.

Yet, throughout these two chapters, the words of Jacob are called “blessing” and when the whole section is summed up in Genesis 49:28, we are told, “this is what their father said to them when he blessed them, blessing each one of them with a suitable blessing.” Perhaps the problem is not with the blessings, but with our understanding of what it means to be blessed. Perhaps blessing is harder and better than we might imagine.

Sometimes blessing is the gift of judgment. This judgment can be a blessing because it forces us to confront our sin.

Jacob gives a suitable blessing to each one of his sons and those blessings include judgment. Reuben, the first born, was the oldest, the strongest, and should have been the leader of his brothers. Yet, Reuben’s character is unstable. Years ago, back in Genesis 35, Reuben had slept with Bilhah, his father’s concubine. At the time, Jacob said nothing. But decades passed and the sin had not been dealt with and it results in judgment upon Reuben. Reuben is removed from his firstborn position among the brothers:

“Unstable as water, you shall no longer excel because you went up onto your father’s bed; then you defiled it – you went up onto my couch!” (Gen. 49:4)

To our knowledge, none of the leaders in Israel’s history ever come from the line of Reuben.

Then Jacob moves to Simeon and Levi. After Dinah was raped at Shechem (Genesis 34), Simeon and Levi agreed to let the men of Shechem join with the people of Israel as long as they were circumcised. The Shechemites agreed and while they were recovering, Simeon and Levi went in and slaughtered the whole city in retribution for what happened to Dinah. Again, this unreconciled sin returns upon the brothers:

“for in their anger they killed men, and at their whim they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.” (Gen. 49:6-7)

When the family leaves Egypt and finally enters the promised land, the lands of Simeon are divided within the land of Judah. As the priests of God, the Levites are given specific cities through the land of Israel. They are scattered among the people. The Levites later found favor in God’s sight by their courage in confronting sin (Ex. 32:25-29). This earned them the role as priests in the house of God and shows they may have listened to what Jacob said. They turned their anger from fierce cruelty into zeal for God.

We also see lesser judgments in the blessings of Isaachar, Dan, Gad, and Benjamin. Each statement of character is an invitation to take a hard look at themselves and their own sinful tendencies. The history of Israel bears the truth of the words of Jacob – Benjamin does devour and divide (Gen. 49:27). Dan is a snake (49:17). Gad is raided frequently (49:19). Isaachar was given good land without having to struggle for it (49:15). Yet, while this should give us confidence in the reliability of God’s Word, we should not view it fatalistically. The blessings on the brothers were honest evaluations of their character, which is a form of judgment that is also a blessing. It invites us to see ourselves truly and then turn toward the Lord.

These blessings don’t look like blessings to us. Yet, judgment can be a blessing when it forces us to confront our sins. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi — and their descendants after them — would have heard this blessing often. They would have been regularly reminded of the sins of their fathers. As hard as this might have been, it was an invitation to repentance and to walk in a different way. If sin is not dealt with by confession and repentance — in individuals or in family — it will catch up with us eventually. Judgment can be a blessing when it invites us to confront our own sin.

We don’t know how these blessings changed Reuben and Simeon and their families. But we do see in Levi that the anger and wrath which was cursed here in Genesis, will become an instrument of passion for God by the time of the Exodus. Sometimes blessing is the gift of judgment. This judgment can be a blessing because it forces us to confront our sin.

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Writing Updates

By the time this issue comes out, the number will likely be higher, but as I write this, my word total for 2024 is 109,429. It is still August and I am at 109% of my yearly goal. Thanks for all the support along the way.

The Body of Doctrine: This is my main project right now. The final draft will probably come in around 500,000 words, so even though I am making significant progress in the time I can devote to it, the book will take a long time to translate and edit. During this process, I am looking to create some Youtube videos to teach some of the basics of Christian doctrine through the Heidelberg Catechism. Once I have the first few videos done, I will certainly share them with you.

Theology Conference: We are still looking into hosting a theology conference in 2025. My summer has been all gas, no brakes, so I have not had much time to breathe and think about this bigger, long-term idea. I am hoping the fall is a bit kinder to me, but we will see.

Thank You

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From the desk of

Stephen C. Shaffer

Author, Pastor-Theologian

​www.penielpress.com

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